


transmogrification

by akamine_chan



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:59:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9773261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/pseuds/akamine_chan
Summary: "Like everything else in my life, my origin story is kinda fucked."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ride_Forever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ride_Forever/gifts).



> Thanks to my international writers club for the encouragement. Beta work by Prophetic and Immoral Crow, plus Ande, as ever.
> 
> Many, many thanks to Ride4Ever for being so damn patient - this is #5 in a series of stories I owe her from an auction YEARS ago.
> 
> Warnings for body horror, gore, other nasty things.

#### Before.

"I came to Chicago on the trail. . ."

* * *

They keep him drugged, imperfectly, a ragged orbit around awareness. During a brief interlude of clarity, they tell him it's for his protection, to keep him from hurting himself, but he's not stupid, he knows it's to keep him under control. 

It's not until much later he realizes it's because they're afraid of him.

They should be.

* * *

#### The Beginning.

"Like everything else in my life, my origin story is kinda fucked."

* * *

It starts ( _the beginning of the end_ ) with a storm.

He's running after Fraser, who's chasing a thief, a god damned purse snatcher who did a grab 'n' run on some little old lady. "Fraser," he shouts as they duck into an apartment building and thunder up the ancient stairwell, booted footfalls echoing loudly. There's a stitch in his side and he's gasping for breath.

It's stupid, the guy's a freakin' petty thief, he didn't touch a hair on the vic's head, but Fraser, well, larceny or murder, justice's gotta be served.

"Fraser!" he yells as they dash across the rooftop. 

There's a gust of wind, and Ray can taste the summer storm, moving fast into the city, pushed by the currents off the Lake They Call Michigan. There's a distant flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder, and suddenly he's drenched and blinking the rain out of his eyes.

In the dimness, Ray sees the perp leap to the next building, and Fraser doesn't hesitate, doesn't slow down, just jumps right after the guy, and Ray's heart is in his throat. "Fraser!" His roar is lost in the thunder.

He's falling behind; he needs to stop smoking, his lungs are seizing up, but he forces himself to keep going. If he wasn't gasping for breath, he'd be cursing at Fraser for doing this to him. 

There's another stroke of lightning and it illuminates the gap between buildings. He sees a flash of red ahead, a target in the dark, but the perp is lost in the rain.

It's an eight foot jump, and Ray pushes himself, runs faster, throws himself into the air with shout and a prayer—

The world explodes with light.

He's burning, fire running along his nerves, traceries of heat, electric and sizzling. He opens his mouth to scream, but he just draws in a stunned, pained breath, heavy with the scent of charred flesh.

There's a _pop_ as his eardrums split under the shock wave, and he feels the way his heart flutters in his chest as it struggles to beat, like a bird trapped in a cage.

His bones are white-hot and incandescent, visible through his scorched skin and the world blurs and dissolves in a shower of sparks, eyes seared shut. 

He falls.

* * *

#### The Middle.

"You can't keep a good man down, but you can kick him while he's still on the ground."

* * *

Ray wakes in a place he's never been before, metal ceiling, featureless. It smells strongly of antiseptic, and the buzz of fluorescent lights is loud.

He aches all over, like he went ten rounds in the ring, and when he tries to move, he can't.

"You're awake. Good."

He has a second to realize there's someone in his peripheral vision before he's blinded by a spotlight, shining directly into his eyes. "Fuck!" Even with his eyes squinched shut, it's too fucking bright, and he tries to pull his arms free of their restraints.

"Please don't struggle. It will only make things worse."

Ray wants to laugh, because that's a line straight outta a bad movie.

And then it starts.

* * *

#### The Middle, Again. And Again.

"Just kill me now."

* * *

They always use the spotlight, so Ray never sees a face, just that voice, cold and robotic. Even that blurs when the pain starts. 

He doesn't know what it is that they do, exactly. He gets nothing but a series of impressions, barely noticeable through the agony. Weird tugging across his skin, diamond sharp, and runnels of liquid. A pulling sensation that comes from inside ( _oh god_ ) of him, and a wet splat of _something_ hitting the floor. The sudden loss of feeling in his arm, his leg, the godawful smell of blood and meat, like the way he imagined the old stockyards would smell.

Once, he sees the flash of a scalpel, shiny silver, and another time he hears the roar of a saw and feels the vibration along his bones.

Mostly Ray screams, and screams, and he can't stop until long after he's left alone. He blacks out, and when he wakes, minutes, hours, days later, he's whole. He wiggles his fingers and toes, stretches as much as he can in the restraints, and hopes that it's just a bad dream.

It's not.

* * *

#### Close to the End.

"Sometimes you can see it coming."

* * *

It takes six months for Fraser to work his way through the bureaucracy. It's hard, when most people deny Margaret Thatcher's very existence, but he finally, _finally_ manages to get a message to her, through one of Sargent Frobisher's old friends who still has ties to the intelligence community.

They walk through the passages at the Shedd Aquarium, with the din of laughing children and weird, echoing acoustics. "Makes it harder for us to be overheard," she says to him. 

Fraser almost doesn't recognize her, with her bleached blonde hair and overwrought makeup. Her chunky earrings and bracelets rattle metallically, and no one gives her a second look. Hiding in plain sight.

He tells her what he knows, gleaned from eyewitness accounts: the lightning strike, Ray's body, his startling resurrection at the morgue, the quiet men in dark suits who took him away. The very public funeral of a decorated Chicago cop, and the empty casket that was lowered into the ground.

She pauses in front of the reef tank and looks at him; light and shadow dances across her face. Fraser can see the fine lines bracketing her mouth; she's older, but still beautiful.

"Sargent," she says. "I took the liberty of doing a cursory search when I got your message and. . ." She reaches out and touches his arm. "Some things are better left alone."

"Inspect—Margaret, _Meg_ —I can't. I need to know what happened, to help Ray if I can." There's a raw wound, ragged-edged and bloody, where Ray was torn from his life. He can't let this go, until he knows the truth.

Her eyes are dark and sad. "I'll be in touch," she says.

A large group of children surges into the room, giggling and happy, deafening in the small space. It startles Fraser, and his eyes automatically flick to the door. When he looks back, Meg is _gone_.

* * *

#### The End.

"Sometimes you can't."

* * *

It's late, and Fraser's tired, but the report is due in the morning, and he still has a way to go. He thinks about brewing a pot of strong coffee in the Consulate kitchen, letting the warmth and bitterness clear the cobwebs from his head.

He putters in the kitchen while the coffeepot gurgles; he washes the single plate in the sink, refills Dief's water bowl, gets the cream out of the fridge. The rest of the Consulate is dark and quiet, but he prefers it to the loneliness of his apartment.

When he returns to his office, his nose wrinkles at the faint hint of perfume, roses and sandalwood. There's a manila folder on his desk, one that wasn't there when he went to make his coffee, a note paper-clipped to the front. "Hello?" He looks around the room, but there's no one here.

 _Be careful what you wish for, Sargent. Don't contact me again._

Fraser sits down in his chair heavily, fingers resting on the folder. He feels a chill, a shiver of premonition and fear. He thinks about Ray, missing and presumed dead for more than a year now, Dief snuffling at the door and whining, waiting for Ray to come home.

He thinks about wishes as he sits at his desk, coffee cooling in the silence of the night.

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> This story has its genesis in the movie _District 9_. It should have been the perfect sci-fi movie for me, and I had been looking forward to it for a while. And when I watched it, all I could feel was a visceral, skin-crawling horror. I'm usually pretty blasé when it comes to horror, so it was a memorable reaction. The scenes with Wikus being held in the laboratory have haunted me for years. I tried to evoke what I felt watching those scenes in this story; I'm not sure I succeeded.
> 
> I owe Ride a debt of gratitude for allowing me to write this kind of story for her; most people wouldn't be okay with something like this. <3
> 
> ETA: Somehow managed to forget that the seed of this story started with the song [I've Never Broken A Bone](https://soundcloud.com/jamieknoxmusic/ive-never-broken-a-bone) by the extremely talented Jamie Knox. The songs starts with the line _I've never broken a bone, I must be invincible._ which led me to think about Ray being invincible, and how that can be a bad thing...


End file.
